Sermon | Kaley Casenhiser, Seminarian | April 16, 2023
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be an offering to you, oh God.
Holy one, we thank you for these holy mysteries made known to us in your presence. Thank you for gathering us in empty tombs and locked rooms. May we recognize you in all the ways you arrive and be channels of the peace. Breathe on us again, oh God of Love and send us out to do the works which you have prepared for us to walk in: to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with you.” Amen.
Last time I preached from this pulpit it was just before Lent and I presented Lent as the hallway between Christmas and Easter, and now as walk the road between Easter and Pentecost it feels appropriate to be returning. The season of Easter continues where Lent leaves off: in each of these post-resurrection stories, Christ is again with us showing us how to live and how to die. Christ brings peace and says: do not fear your life or your death.
Easter is not a destination, it is a season of transition; and like Lent, it is also a period preparation. It is time where the memory the terror of cross is still fresh, and the resurrection is emergent. It is a time where some are still mourning, and others are risking rejoicing. It is a time where the reality of life’s fragility and finitude feels close at hand and all the emotions— joy, fear, astonishment, anger, and affection are in flux and entangled, like roots.
At the Easter Vigil last weekend, Heidi reminded us that joy and fear can and must dwell together in Easter. I don’t want to move too quickly past the tension between Easter doubt and Easter joy. Jesus asks us to linger in this complicated remembrance during Easter and to consider how we might still live after feeling little and big deaths every day. Poetically and practically, Eastertide gives us time to process what the passion and resurrection means for our lives. The season of Easter is seven weeks, not six—one week longer than Lent. Christ’s resurrected self—whether recognized or not—remains an extra week before permanently ascending to heaven and why? So that he can breathe on them and embolden them to bring peace and mercy when he leaves them a final time at Pentecost. Already, Christ is preparing those whom he loves that for another death, but not without first offering them his very essence— the breath of the Holy Spirt—and encouraging to live as if this is so.
It is traditional to renew our baptismal vows during Easter because these Gospel accounts inspire us to reflect on how we will live in light of these holy mysteries we encounter in encounter in the passion narrative. So then, Easter is not about arriving and remaining fixed, but instead, about recognizing that God is with us and within us calling us to process out into the world God so loves together. It’s no wonder that the formational process at work in Eastertide—in the sacred hallway between the resurrection and the ascension of Christ and pouring out of the holy spirit to all people in Pentecost-- is referred to as “mystagogy” — leading people into the mysteries.”
As we turn our bodies towards Easter’s mysteries, we faced with a question: how can we live as Eastering people—believing in resurrection while knowing we are dying? There are two doors at the end of Easter’s hallway: the empty tomb where the women run out or the locked upper room where the disciples doubt. The good news is the spirit of God breathes through both contexts.
Again, Heidi reminded us at the Easter Vigil that people’s first reaction resurrection was fear not joy. And we see this fear in the disciples today, don’t we? They are hiding away in a locked room late into the evening. But in the midst of fear Christ offers the gift of peace.
This Sunday is commonly referred to the “doubting Thomas Sunday” because of the phrase: “Do not doubt but believe.” But doubt is a poor translation. The original Greek is pistos, an adjective meaning “faithful” or “trustworthy.” Richard Swanson, in Provoking the Gospel of John, translates this as, “Do not become unfaithful, but faithful.” If we take this a more accurate translation, then Jesus is less concerned with Thomas’s doubt that he is with his faithfulness.
Here, in the middle of Thomas’s fear and suspicion, I like to imagine Jesus is doing a call back to the way the women responded to the empty tomb: “They left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy and ran to tell his disciples of what they had seen.” Jesus is saying to Thomas, do not become unfaithful like these men who allow their fear to keep them locked up in rooms, instead be like the women, who with their doubts, went out to share to the good news anyway. Just as the women leave the tomb with fear and great joy, leave this room, and testify to what you have seen.
Thank God for the women, and not just them, but the eunuchs and the lepers and the outcasts who recognized Jesus and ran out to tell the story even with their doubts and fears. We learn how to practice faithfulness from these first apostles. Their courageous witness is faith-feet faithfulness as the bishop reminded us on Maundy Thursday. Faithfulness is that intimate, that holy, and that messy and it from this place the church becomes embodied.
But, God also offers grace to those who doubt, like the disciples, and Thomas. Just as a berry is offered in the poem we read by Albert Garcia, God allows those who doubt to place their hands on his vulnerable body. It is, after all, astonishing to witness God in the flesh. Christ says to Thomas: touch me, place your hands in my wounds. Touch me, and now trust that even when you cannot touch me, I like this food that you eat and this cup that you drink am with you in your body.
God is gentle with us in our fearful moments and breathes on us so we are never without the advocating, mothering spirit of God, even when death comes.
So on this walk from Eastertide towards Pentecost, may we welcome doubt and unbridled joy together in and trust that from both perspectives the spirit of God breathes good news. I conjecture that this is why we are given so many stories of post-resurrection accounts— grief and love are mingled by in these encounters. When joy feels more resonant in resurrection than fear, we need the women, the first apostles, who upon seeing the tomb empty IMMEDIATELY went out to share of what they were seen, risking that they would be gaslit by those in authority. And when fear feels more palpable, we need to find ourselves with the disciples in today’s Gospel—who, even a week after seeing the risen God are still terrified and sitting locked up in an upper room for fear of what this story could mean if it were publicized. We need both the empty tomb and the locked room, because we feel them both in our lives.
What does it mean to be Eastering People? What are we then to do with this breath of God that lives in us?
First, we are to remember that doubt does not make us unfaithful, and in fact, we cannot practice our faith without it.
Second, we are called to authorize the testimonies of all those who experience God and to share our own.
And last, as Eastering people, God asks us to our bodies to be places for places of peace for all.
So, may we learn from these women who do not pause in their doubt but instead run with it believing in the power of the life and the love that moves them towards Justice: towards mercy: towards gathering; towards feasting; and washing feet. This is feet to face faith. We cannot embrace love’s enfleshments without bringing our whole bodies—wounds, warts, doubts, and passions. God wants all of it and desires that none of our fears recent us for preaching form our experiences of Love’s touch. Let nothing stop you, my friend. Be the body of Love crucified and resurrected I’m the world. Dare to taste and see. Dare to trust it. Dare to place Love’s body to you lips and welcome it as nourishment—strength for the journey—even if you do not fully understand it, your body is welcome here.
from The Black Maria
Body of sight. Body of
breaths. Body of trying.
Beloved, to
day you eat,
today you bathe, today
you laugh
Today you walk,
today you read,
today you paint, my love,
Today you study stars,
today you write,
today you climb the stairs,
Today you run,
today you see,
today you talk,
You cut the basil
You sweep the floor
& as you chore, touch
the ankles & hairs of your befores
who look up from their work
in the field or at the chisel
to tell you in their ways: You Live!